


Ghost Ship

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, M/M, Mick Rory Defense Squad, Misunderstandings, Physical Disability, body image issues, much angst, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 09:25:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11272632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: The Oculus spits Len back out into the world, a little over a year after he sacrifices himself.He finds things different, and not in a good way.





	Ghost Ship

**Author's Note:**

> For icewhisper, who requested Len angst that ripped her heart out. Hope this works!

Len goes to his death with his eyes open, his heart set, and an apology on his lips.

Mick survived without him, after the fire. Thrived, even.

He'll do fine without Len.

Len's sure of it. 

What happened next, though, Len isn't expecting. 

Len isn't expecting to come back to life.

He isn't expecting to find himself back on the Waverider, a little over a year after he died.

He isn't expecting to find it so very different from what he’d left.

Most of all, though, he isn't expecting to be _right_.

Because Mick is. 

Doing fine without Len, that is.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

_"There are no strings on me," Len says, best smirk on his lips, and Mick on his mind._

_Mick - best friend, lover, husband._

_Partner._

_Len's body is there when the explosion comes, so sudden and shocking that he doesn't feel pain nor flame nor even hear the sound of it, but his mind is far away, back in a warm bed, the golden light of the afternoon fading. Mick beside him, their limbs intertwined, putting aside his lighter voluntarily, turning back to Len, pressing their lips together -_

_Len's lips buzz with the feeling -_

_And when the blue comes and eats away at the scene, eats away at everything, eats away at Mick - not Mick, never Mick - eating away at him like the flames -_

_Len's lips buzz with his screams -_

_Screams and screams and screams and screams -_

"Snart! Wake up!"

Len opens his eyes.

Mick is standing beside the bed. Already dressed, Len notes with hazy regret. 

"You were dreaming," Mick says. His eyes aren't focused on Len, but somewhere beyond him. "Nightmares, again."

Len nods mutely. He lifts a hand, all instinct, for Mick's belt loop, intending on pulling him in, but Mick rocks back on his heels, a minute gesture, but enough that Len falters.

Enough that Len sees the horrible paw, the deformed, misshapen, melted stump that is - that _was_ \- his right hand.

Len retracts the hand mutely. 

"You're awake early," he says instead, after a few minutes. After swallowing a few times. His throat's gone dry for some reason. "Is there a mission?"

"Thought I heard Gideon calling," Mick says. Vague.

Means no. 

Means Mick just wanted up. Wanted out. Out of the bed before Len noticed he had ever been there.

Oh, Mick put a good face on it. He never said he wanted out, never hinted he regretted sharing his quarters with Len now that Len's own had been given away to some fresh-faced puppy who'd never finished growing up. 

Len never asked if Mick wanted out. He didn't want to hear it, if the answer was yes.

If.

That's a laugh. 

When. That's more like it. When Mick finally concedes that all is not like it used to be. When he finally admits what they had was gone. Admits what should be admitted.

It's over.

It’s all over between them. 

Len sits up. "Want me to come with?" he asks. 

"You don't have to," Mick says quickly. Too quickly. "You're still recovering."

Len rolls his eyes. "It's been three months, Mick. I'm fine."

Mick is silent for a moment too long. 

"...I've lost time again," Len says flatly.

"Only five weeks. It’s been four months and change, since we found you." 

"Month and a half," Len says bitterly, getting up. He grabs his jacket, wraps it around himself. He's already got three layers on, but it doesn't matter. He's always too cold. "Hardly nothing."

"You'll get it back," Mick says encouragingly. "You've been getting it back faster each time."

"With holes."

"Better than nothing."

Nothing, yes. That's what Len's wonderful brain has boiled down to. Holes. _Nothing_.

The blue glow of the Oculus has eaten into his brain until it's all he can do to remember his own goddamn name.

(He always remembers Mick. Even when he wakes up screaming, the whole life of him gone until there's nothing but the terror of opening his eyes into the wide open world for the first time, he always remembers Mick.)

He's cold.

What irony.

He'd been Captain Cold. Leonard Snart. 

Finest thief in Central City. Smartest brain. Quickest hands. Toughest gun. Best crew.

Len paid them all to save Mick's life.

He didn’t regret it, no. For Mick, he’d always pay it all.

But he misses them. 

He’s cold without them.

He's no thief, no supervillain, not anymore: he gave all that up when he joined the Waverider crew the first time, sold his services for a lark and a promise of adventure. 

Gave it up again when he refused to go berth at home, to shelter his useless wreck at Lisa's side. Lisa would never turn him away - that's why Lisa's home, why she'll always be home - but that's the same reason he can't do it to her. Let her be free, his treasure, his Golden Glider leading the Rogues that in another life could have been led by him.

Everything else is gone, too.

No brain, not anymore. What good's a planner who can't even keep track of what day it is? Len trained himself a master with a skillset dependent on his brilliant plans and perfect internal clock. Now, the plans look like Swiss cheese and the clock's gone haywire. His brain boiled in the blue of the Oculus, swimming in nightmares and losing memories like a leaky ship bailing out, and sometimes getting memories that aren't his stuck in places they don't belong. Confusion reigns supreme. 

No hands, either. He can barely use the thick paws that curl in front of him to dress himself, much less nick something in the flicker of fingers. His skin didn't burn when the Oculus hit him, oh no, it _melted_. It oozed like plastic, fusing finger to finger. He didn't even have proper fingernails anymore. Gideon kept trying to fix them, kept trying to think of new reasons why her first attempts at regeneration didn't work, but he screamed at the touch of her rays, the bright blue light that shone down onto him, and when she’d tried, he'd ripped himself free of the medical chair by his teeth in a frenzy of blood spurting out onto the floor. They'd tied him down, only for her next attempt to fail to cure him as well.

No gun. Palmer had taken it. Palmer had -

Len doesn't remember.

No. _No_. 

He _will_ remember. He will. It was _his gun_ , damnit; his, only his, ever since he stole it fair and square -

_The plans for the cryogenic cyclotron sit in front of him. They don't know what they had, these stupid labs; they hoped merely to use it to power a new set of refrigerators, but he knew better even though he was no more than a mere thief. He could get the pieces he needs to build it into a gun - to refine it, to fix it, to make it do things its original inventor couldn't even conceive of – not even the Flash could stand in his way with this -_

That's not true, damnit. He stole the gun from Ramon, from STAR Labs. It got sold to him in a dirty warehouse by a dirty man who he'd put in a dirty grave.

(He remembers those plans, though, and putting together the gun by himself after all those prototypes. Another universe, perhaps. Another life.) 

In this life, though, Palmer had – Palmer - 

Wait, he has it; he remembers. Palmer took gun apart to stop a bomb instead of just freezing the fucking thing. He hadn't been there, which is why he doesn't remember it, but Mick told him about it. 

Len wants to wrap his hands around Palmer's throat and shout "you're supposed to be smart, you bastard", but he won't. Palmer could swat Len down like a fly, pathetic as he is now, and he doesn't want to display his weakness even more than it already is.

So that's that. No brain, no hands, no gun.

No crew.

That's what's burns the worst. That's the ice that scorches him, the oozing wound in his soul, the hole in the center of his heart that bleeds him dry.

The Waverider has bonded in his absence, the ragtag gaggle of idiot do-gooders turned into a family. A family he has no part of. 

Not even Mick is his anymore.

Mick, his partner, who stood by him through everything, who he thought would always be there.

Mick's moved on.

Mick -

Mick only sleeps in his bed by the barest technicality, coming in late and leaving early. Mick goes out with the team on missions that function like a well-oiled machine, while Len stutters and stops and doesn't fit. Mick has jokes with the team, references to things that Len wasn't here for. 

Mick can barely look at the mess that's left of Len: melted hands, melted brains, even his pretty face scorched up one side by the terrible flame - a lightning strike webbing his cheek and crawling up his ear. Scars that sometimes glow blue in the dark even where there's nothing blue in the room.

Mick's hands shake when he touches Len, which isn't often. He doesn't want to. Len can tell.

Len doesn't blame him. He's disgusting. 

Useless.

Their partnership - their _marriage_ \- used to be based on something. Give and take. Len's the brain, Mick's the muscle. Len's the quick thief, Mick's the wall of force. They balanced each other. Fire and ice.

Len's got nothing more to give. He's spent it all.

Mick wants out, Len knows.

And one day, one day, Len will give Mick a final gift, give him his freedom. Len will absolve Mick of the guilt that keeps him at Len’s side and watch him go off to live the life without Len that he should have had, if only Len had never crawled out of death's grip and back here to bother him further. 

On that day, Len will freeze the heart that he gave to Mick long ago with the gun schematics that live in his brain now and put himself in the same grave his father lies in. But that’s not important. _Mick’s_ what’s important. He forgot that and left him behind, to the prison system, to the fire, to the tender mercies of the Time Masters. He’ll be paying for that forever. No, Len’s learned his hard-taught lesson. He needs to let Mick go.

One day.

But not today.

"Let me get dressed," Len says, pretending he's not already most of the way there already. "I'll come with you."

Mick nods and heads to the door to wait for him there.

Not today, Len thinks.

Not today.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mick's nails have been chewed down to the quick, a habit that he thought he'd broken years ago when he was just a child, but they still cut half-moons into his palms with how tightly he's squeezing them.

Len.

God, Len.

His beautiful, brilliant Len, _his_ Len, not some Doomworld copy created and altered by the Legion of Doom, the one he loved and he lost to his own terrible stupidity. The one who knows everything he's ever done. The one who took his spot at the Oculus, his self-hating sacrifice, so that Mick could live, because Len loves him. Because Len is the only person to ever look at Mick and see him, really _see_ him, and still love him anyway. 

Len.

There's a pit in Mick's stomach, knotted up tight with anxiety and guilt and self-hatred, and it's worse than anything he's ever known. It makes him vomit. It makes him cry like he hasn't in years, bawling like a child with his knees pulled up to his chest in the corner of the restroom in his suite, trying to keep quiet so that Len doesn’t wake up and hear him. It makes him want to light fires, then shy away from that release because wasn't that always the root of the goddamn problem?

Len, Len. 

Len, whose face and hands - his beautiful hands, his pride and joy, the part of his body he always cared for most, with gloves and lotions and stretches and careful minding - have been irrevocably scarred, irrevocably ruined, and all because of Mick. 

Len, who must hate him, now.

Mick can't see how he doesn't. Mick's failed every test of friendship and comradery, of the love and loyalty he swore to Len. Mick sold him out to the goddamn Time Masters, let them set him up, let them send _him_ as a weapon against him, seeking vengeance. Threatening Lisa, the surest way through Len's defenses; using Len's love for his own self as yet another tool to hurt him. Refusing, even once they were teammates again, to forgive him for so long, so very long.

Spending days and weeks of their precious time together fucking around being angry, because he thought he had forever.

Taking Ray Palmer's place by the Oculus, and that must be the worst of all the reasons Len hates him now, because look at what that caused. Palmer called Len a hero, right after it happened, but Mick knew better. Mick knows better. 

Len took that place at the Oculus for Mick and Mick alone, as yet another plea for forgiveness, in the hope that Mick would forgive his ghost the way he'd refused to forgive the man.

Mick's lips are numb with how often he's bitten them to keep from screaming apologies that would do no one any good.

What would it help now, when Len wakes up each night with terrible screams, high-voiced and horrifically unlike him - unless you happen to have heard him as a child, that is? When Len's wonderful brain loses days, weeks, months, years, _decades_ each morning, only to struggle all day to recover? 

Mick doesn't even have his partner's cold gun, to which he had been entrusted. No, he couldn't even do that much right. 

Len had left it to him, a bequeath from a dead man, and Mick had given it away before he'd even worn his widower's weeds for a full year.

No wonder the Len the Legion had altered had been willing to kill that other version of Mick. 

It all makes sense, now. It's all forgiven now, that murder of a man who wore his face and came from the future. Maybe the Legion version of Len, brainwashed as he was, saw the truth, saw what Mick should've seen, that Mick had betrayed everything he's ever loved for - 

For _nothing_. 

Just the way he always does.

It all tastes like ash in Mick's mouth.

You'd think he'd be used to ruining everything by now - his family, his life - but it hurts, it hurts so bad. He never thought he'd ruin Len, somehow. After all those years together, he'd let himself think that maybe, just maybe, Len couldn't be ruined, that the job had been done long before Mick ever showed up. 

But no.

Mick should have never doubted his ability to destroy.

Len was always so careful with his heart. He gave it to Lisa, to his profession, to his skills. To Mick.

And Mick gave every one of those away: he betrayed Len, he threatened Lisa, and now - in the end - he took away everything else, too.

God, Mick can barely _look_ at him. 

He can't let his eyes linger on that beloved frame, lest he see the resentment, the hatred, in those beloved eyes. He doesn't want to see the knowledge in Len's face that this all could have been avoided if only he'd given his trust - his love - to someone more worthy of it.

He can barely bear to touch him, lest he see how Len recoil from him. He sneaks into their bed like a guilty man, waiting until Len is fast asleep so that he can have a few blissful hours with Len in his arms, pretending that things were as they once were, soothing Len through the tremors that wrack his frame each night, hoping only give his sleeping form some moments of peace as Mick hungrily memorizes Len's face - no less beautiful to Mick because of what it has gone through, only different. 

He's awake and gone each morning before he can see Len's eyes open, that single moment of contentment and unclouded joy before reality sets it and he remembers.

He remembers what Mick has done to him.

What Mick has robbed from him.

That moment when that joy darkens and fades, when tight-lipped unspoken rage and misery replaces it. Mick's seen that look on Len's face before - all life crushed brutally under heel, no pleasure at all, because all he cares for sits in the hands of a man that could crush him with a gesture. No peace, no, just - 

Submission.

Mick doesn't know when he became Lewis Snart to Len, but he can't bear the knowledge of it.

One day, Mick will man up and tell Len that he's free. That he doesn't have to keep up appearances, that he doesn't have to play nice for Mick. That he doesn't have to pretend not to be angry, not to hate him. Mick can take whatever punishment Len wants to dole out, just as long as he lets Mick stay by his side. 

Mick wants to promise Len that he'll never hurt him again, that he'll never let him be hurt, that he’ll never choose anyone, anything, not even his own self-hatred, over Len ever again. But that would all be a lie.

He remembers the bruises he left on Len's face, Len's body, when Len offered up his silent apology for leaving Mick behind, while Mick made no apologies for what he'd done. It wasn't the first time, either. Mick can't swear it will never happen again because he's sworn it before. He's sworn it so many times. He's lied, so many times.

How can Mick offer anything to this man, who he loves more than his own heart?

He loves Len more than fire. He knows that truth down to his bones - having been forced to go without both, he knows, now, which one he'd pick. He doesn't want the world to burn any less, but he'll let the flint and tinder slip through his fingers for a single true smile from Len.

But Len will never know that.

Even if Mick tells him, he'll never believe him.

Mick lost Len to the Oculus.

The Oculus gave him back, hurt and damaged and angry, and Mick is so painfully grateful for the smallest scraps of Len's attention - what pity Len has to give him, he will take - because something, _anything_ , is better than nothing.

It's even worth staying here on the Waverider, with all the whispers and the ill looks, the jabs and the cuts, where everyone thinks he's nothing but a dumb thug. Where they all know that he's the piece of crap that Len gave his life for, a lesser thief, an inferior asset, and now they have Len there to remind him of what they could have had if Mick hadn't let Len take his place. 

Len doesn't want to go back to Central, so they won't. 

They'll stay here, then, as long as Len wants.

Mick lost him once.

He can't bear to let him go again.

Never again.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

They say such terrible things, the crew, when they think Len can't hear them. Len can hear - many, many things. 

"Snart doesn't even have _hands_ anymore," Jax hisses. "We can't let him go out here; it's way too dangerous."

"Mick says it'll be good for him," Sara says.

Jax snorts. No doubt he knows that Mick is speaking out of pity, out of scorn. He knows Mick well, now. Mick was always fond of him; Jax no doubt knows how trustworthy Mick is, how cunning, how insightful. How skillfully he handles people. 

How skillfully he's handling Len. 

Yes, Jax's disdain is all for Len. He knows how useless Mick's efforts are. He knows how _useless_ Len is, now. He knows that Mick's only being sentimental.

Len creeps back to his room, silent and unheard.

“I really do think the best place for the poor guy would be at some sort of hospital,” the kid Len can never recall the name of is saying, his hand clasped with the girl who replaced Kendra - what's her name - Amaya. She’s new, too. Len hears them as he passes by the library on the way back to his room. “Somewhere where they can take care of him properly.”

“I agree,” Amaya says. “He may have been one of the team, once upon a time, but keeping him here is just cruel.”

“I don’t know,” Palmer says, sounding like he's frowning. The two of them and him and Stein are all sitting around a table, looking through books. “He said he doesn’t want to go back to Central.”

“Mr. Snart doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for him,” Stein points out. “Especially not with the deterioration of his mental facilities as a result of the Oculus.” He shudders, clearly horrified by the thought. 

“Injured soldiers are worse than animals,” Amaya says. “An animal will realize when the fight is done. A soldier will just hurt himself more. There are places that will take him even if he doesn’t want to go. Someone with a damaged mind can be cared for there. It’s best for them, even if they don’t agree.”

“You don’t know Snart,” Palmer says with a snort. “He doesn’t stay anywhere he doesn’t want to be.”

“Even now?” Stein asks.

Palmer is silent.

Len passes them by, going back to his room, silent and unheard. 

He takes the long way there. 

"Mr. Snart," Gideon says. She speaks to him in a whisper, now. He's asked her to, and she listens to him. Someone still listens, at least. "You need to take your medication."

Len shakes his head mutely. He doesn't like the drugs.

"Mr. Snart, your high tolerance for pain aside, you must permit your body time to heal. It cannot do so if it’s in pain."

The drugs make him fuzzy. Make him not think. Like the first few days before the Waverider found him, all alone on that abandoned ship on that beach, the wreck of the Mary Celeste. Him and the ghosts, where everything was horror and agony.

Like every morning, when he wakes up with a new hole in his head.

"Please, Mr. Snart."

No.

"If you do not take the medication, I will be forced to inform Mr. Rory."

Len falters.

He can't burden Mick more than he already does.

"Fine," he says, tasting bile. "But I want a camera."

"It's yours, Mr. Snart," Gideon says. It's strange, but she almost sounds relieved.

She must hate the idea of one of her crew dying when she could stop it. Mission not fulfilled, or something like that.

The camera lets Len sit in on the mission meeting even when he's splayed out on his bed, shaking and shivering and fuzzy from the drugs he's taken at Gideon's request. 

It lets him see what his presence has cost Mick.

"Your services will not be necessary on this mission, Mr. Rory," Rip says, his voice crisp. "It requires a certain subtlety and delicacy."

"Not quite your style, Mick," Sara jokes, punching him in the shoulder.

They all laugh. Mick shakes his head a little in what must be amusement - his back is to the camera, so Len can't tell for sure. 

"Mr. Rory's limited capacity for thought is too busy to be concerned with matters of delicacy," Stein says, shaking his head. "This mission calls for intellect."

"So where's that leave you, Gray?" Jax laughs, a tease among friends.

The talk turns to logistics.

Len bows his head. He knows what they really mean. 

Mick hardly lacks for subtlety, of course. Mick was Len's right hand man for a reason - he was always better at reading people than Len, even if Len was better at manipulating them. Len's plans, without Mick, were by necessity mechanical, lifeless things, tricks of timing, metal and machine, and what went wrong was always the people. 

With Mick, Len's plans were works of art. 

Each person accounted for, each contingency planned for -

Together, they were unstoppable.

But now -

Now, Mick has a new crew. New partners. Palmer, perhaps - Mick had given him Len's gun, and Len's seen his old jacket, Len’s old favorite jacket, hanging in Palmer's closet. Or maybe the new partner was Amaya, who stood so close to Mick and smiled at him like she understood everything about him. Maybe it was both of them. 

It doesn't matter. Mick's brain and intuition and willpower, his strength and his wisdom, are offered to them, now, the most precious of gifts. Not Len. Not anymore. It's all for _them_.

Or it had been, anyway.

Len can see the way they tease him, the way they pretend to think that Mick's nothing more than the dumb thug he plays for a hostile audience - jabs that make Len see red and gnash his teeth to keep silent, laughter that rings in his ears long after they’ve left the room. And Mick, Mick nods along with them. Mick, Len's Mick - once upon a time, _Len's_ Mick - says nothing to stop them or to censure them.

There is, Len presumes, some in-joke he is missing. Some secret event that bonded them together, to make this type of humor, which Len’s always hated and Mick never seemed to be fond of, be fine. Be _acceptable_ , when each word makes Len taste bile and rage.

But that was then. Now -

Now they leave Mick out of their planning, and that, too, must be because of Len. 

Because Mick's mind is consumed with Len, rather than the mission. Mick is too concerned, too _sentimental_ , about Len to focus adequately on the job at hand.

It happens, sometimes. Len knows how to handle it: let Mick take the time, let him cool off. Let Mick focus on the thing that’s gotten his mind focused – whether it be a fire or the local urban garden or a stray kitten that needs round the clock care – and once he’s worked his way through what he feels he needs to do, he’ll come back. The Legends seem to have learned that lesson as well. 

Len never expected to be the kitten in that scenario.

The Legends – the Legends must know Mick so well, now. Better than Len does anymore. Mick's changed so much in the time Len was gone.

Len misses him. There's an empty space at his side that Mick ought to fill, but even when he's standing there, Len knows that he's not there, not really. He's still with the crew.

The crew, who he permits untold liberties.

God, when Mick was Len's, Len would murder anyone who talk to him that way. Hell, he _has_ murdered people who said that sort of thing. He doesn't understand what's changed. 

He doesn't understand at all.

If Mick tolerates this, there must be a reason. If they leave Mick out of their discussions, if they don't give him choice part of plans, if they tease him for inadequacies he's never possessed - 

There must be a reason.

What's changed?

Only Len.

If Len is keeping Mick back, keeping Mick down -

He doesn't want to do that.

Mick sits out of missions he could have commanded. He defers to Sara, to Palmer, to Amaya, even to Jax or that annoying one Len can never seem to remember the name of. Puppies half his age; men that wouldn't ever make the cut for Len's crew, not even worthy enough to kiss Mick's boots.

Nate and Palmer and Jax talk about fixing the ship, but fall silent when Mick walks in, despite all he must know from his time as Kronos. Despite his intuitive understanding of machines that work on combustion of any sort.

Stein speaks sharply and Mick moves to accommodate him, little gestures that smooth the path in front of him, and Stein's eyes are too busy looking at Len to appreciate the gestures.

Sara speaks with Mick in low voices that Len can't overhear, and Mick's shoulders slump in defeat.

Len is holding Mick back.

As long as Mick is stuck babysitting Len, he can't take his rightful place in the Waverider crew. 

It's Len's fault.

He should let him go back to the Waverider, to his chosen crew, where he belongs.

Just -

He can't bring himself to.

Not yet.

But soon.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Len's pulling away from him.

Mick's losing him.

He's _losing him_. 

Mick knew the day would come, when Len would demand a reckoning. But it's too soon, it's too soon. 

He can't lose Len again so soon. 

He can't lose Len.

Period. 

He's never losing Len again.

He doesn't care what he has to do, what he has to give up, but he's never losing Len to anything ever again if he can help it.

He'll fight armies by his side; he'll go up against men who make time stand still and throw lightning; he'll spit in the face of time itself for him. He'll bind them together and beg for Len's forgiveness. He'll walk beside him into death, this time, if that's what it takes. 

For that, though, he'll need supplies.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

There's something in the air.

None of the crew, the Legends, notice, but Len does. He always could smell trouble wafting down the way. He has a sense for it.

He remembers Alexa.

Security deposit job. It was a beaut of a job, everything planned out, everything perfect. Len had been younger, then, him and Mick together, and he'd been eager to sign his name to such a job. Mick had already been talking big as to how he'd spend the money when they had it.

And then Len's nose started twitching. 

He smelled trouble and he tried to deny it, at first, because the job was that damn good, but that spot between his shoulder blades, his blind spot - it wouldn't stop feeling like someone was right about to slip a knife right into it. 

He'd pulled them out.

Mick had bitched for a day or so, moaning about the loss of money, the prestige, all that crap, but a few drinks and a nice fight soothed him soon enough.

And a week later they watched as their former compatriots were marched out in line, handcuffs shining around their wrists. Those that were alive, that was. Not everyone was taken alive.

And now -

Well, Len's nose is twitching and his shoulder blades feel less like an oncoming knife than a full on spear. Maybe that spear of destiny they keep talking about but never explaining.

Len shuffles through the hallways, his useless hands curled into his chest, his eyes darting from side to side. He knows he looks half-deranged, but for once he woke up knowing where he is, knowing who he is, knowing what he is, and what he is absolutely - goddamn -

Terrified.

Something is coming.

Some terrible storm, some knot, some safe that can't be cracked, some last minute change -

Some mystery -

_He doesn't know how long he's been there, amid the grizzled hulking mast and the slick wet wood of the deck. He doesn't know how many times the ghosts have come for him, shining blue in his vision._

_He doesn't know what shore they've landed upon._

_He doesn't even know his own name._

_"Mick," he gasps, when the ghosts bring him water. "How's Mick? Where's Mick?"_

_They pour water down his throat, sore from screaming._

_"Tell us your name and join our crew," they whisper in his ears._

_"Mick," he begs. "Tell me of Mick."_

_They put bread to his lips, but pull it back before he can eat it._

_"Your name," they whisper. "Our crew."_

_"Mick!" he calls. "Mick! Are you there?"_

_They sigh and feed him, and they flee in terror when the Waverider blasts into the sky above the wreckage that holds those who drowned ten thousand men or more._

"Something's coming," Len says, resting his head against the cool grey wall of the Waverider. "Gideon. Something's coming."

"Mr. Snart," Gideon says, her voice smooth and emotionless. "Are you feeling well?"

"Where are the Legends?" Len asks. "Where did they go?"

"They're on mission," Gideon says. "1959. Please return to your quarters, Mr. Snart."

"No. I need to find it."

"What are you looking for?" Gideon asks. "I can help you find it."

"I don't know," Len whispers. "But I'll know it when I see it. It's coming. It's coming for me."

"What is it, Mr. Snart? What's coming?"

Len closes his eyes.

"A nightmare."

_"Holy crap, it's Snart," Jax shouts, his arms and head ablaze, blasting through the wild-eyed men who rush at them. Pirates, lured in by the wreck, from every era and every time, ridden like horses by the ghosts that they slowly become as they join the deathless crew. The Legends had tracked a group of troublesome time pirates who stole something that the timeline desperately need to put back to be made right. "Guys! It's Snart!"_

_"I thought we put him back in his timeline," Sara shouts._

_"We did!"_

_"Then what the hell is he doing here?"_

_Len starts screaming again as the pain hits again, the roiling pangs that come in as sure as the tide._

_"Shit! Something's wrong with him!"_

_The Legends rip him free and take him to the ship. Mick's there. His eyes are wide and wild, but he's whole, he's hearty._

_It's Mick, it's Mick, it's Mick!_

_"What's happened?" Mick rasps. "What - why is he here?"_

_"It's Snart," Palmer says unnecessarily, then grunts as Len's flailing arms hit him right in the belly, knocking the air out of him._

_"I can tell it's Snart!" Mick roars. "Why is he here? Why isn't he back where he belongs?"_

_Mick - doesn't want him here?_

_No, that's wrong._

_That's wrong._

_"You'd think you'd be happier, Mr. Rory," Stein says snippily as he and Jax split apart. He has a busted lip; that's probably why. "He is your partner."_

_"One I put back into the timeline after watching him murder another version of me," Mick snaps._

_Len did that?_

_Len did -_

_"Why is he screaming? What's the - "_

_They pull his head up, and the bandages the ghosts wrapped around his face fall away._

_"Oh god," Mick whispers. "Oh god - oh god - his face – his hands - Len - Lenny -"_

_"What happened to you?" Sara whispers._

_"The Oculus," Len tells them, delirious with pain but strangely lucid. "It was the Oculus."_

_His eyes are fixed on Mick's face, so he sees his face twist with horror, with some realization -_

_"Lenny - it's really you -"_

_And then the pain comes again and wipes out all thought._

"I'm telling you," Len insists. "There's something wrong."

"You're sick," Sara says with a sigh, exchanging long-suffering looks with Stein. "Listen, Leonard -"

"Not so sick that I don't know when something's the matter," Len says, keeping a tight leash on his temper. His voice is nasal with irritation. "I'm getting better -"

"Yeah, yeah, getting better every day," she says. "We hear it from Mick." She hesitates, softens. "Leonard. Listen. I'll - I'll do another check, okay?"

"You think I'm hallucinating again," he says bitterly.

"At least it's not as bad as when Mr. Rory was suffering a similar affiliation," Stein says.

Len swallows down his sudden rush of anxiety - Mick hallucinated? When? What? - and focuses on the task at hand. "Where's Mick?" he asks instead. _He'll believe me, he'll understand - won't he?_

"He's getting some supplies," Sara says. "Just relax, will you? Nothing's going to go wrong. This mission is a piece of cake."

Len stares at her for a long second. "What next," he says dryly. "At least it couldn't get any worse? Cue thunderstorm?"

They stare at him blankly.

"Never mind," Len says, and stalks off as best as he can. His back was straight, his head held high, but his feet still drag and his useless hands are curled in front him protectively and there's nothing he can do about that.

He needs to find Mick. 

_"No!" Len shrieks. "No!"_

_"Calm down, damnit!" Stein shouts._

_"I've got his arms!" a black woman far stronger than she ought to be shouts in return._

_"I've got a leg!"_

_"Leonard, we're trying to help you," Sara pleads. "It's Gideon - don't you remember Gideon? She fixed your hand."_

_Len doesn't want to be fixed._

_He killed Mick, he hurt Mick - he doesn't remember it, but then again he doesn't remember his own name half the time - and if Mick says it's true, then it must be true -_

_They force him into the chair._

_Len looks up into the light above the chair - blue light -_

_His scream this time has no words._

Len can't find Mick.

Mick's out, they said at first. Supplies.

Then he misses a check in.

A minor delay, they assure him. No doubt a complication that Mick is handling even now. Or maybe he just went to a bar.

Then they laugh.

But the hour grows later and later. Their smiles fade. Their faces grow drawn and worried.

Len roams the halls of the Waverider like a restless ghost.

A ship out to sea, looking for its anchor.

He can't find Mick.

If something happened to Mick - if he was so worried about Len that he let his guard down -

God, why wasn't Len there? 

This is like that horrific nightmare that was their original trip to the 1950s, with the loneliness and Jax turning into a hawk, and all of that concluding with the revelation that while Len had been dicking around, Mick had been at the mercy of the Time Masters, turning into -

Len stops as he hears the door of the Waverider slide open, and he turns to face -

His breath catches in his throat as he sees -

Kronos.

"No," Len whispers. " _No_."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Len wakes up slowly.

He's in his bed on Willow Avenue, Central City - no.

Cell Block B in Iron Heights - no.

The Waverider - no.

Where _is_ he?

Len sits up.

"I don't know this place," he says, tasting the truth on his lips. 

"You didn't make it in here last time," a voice says from the door.

Mick.

Len blinks at him. He's wearing the Kronos suit, but not the helmet, but he's smiling at him.

Smiling. 

Len smiles back helplessly. "Mick," he says. "What happened?"

"You fainted," Mick says promptly. 

"That's a filthy lie."

"You did," Mick says. "But I think I gave you a shock."

"What am I doing here?" Len asks. "Why are you dressed like that?"

Mick pauses. Licks his lips. "It's for you," he says.

Len blinks again. "What is?"

"It's my old time ship," Mick says. "From when - well. You know. But it's mine. Ours. I want - it's for you."

Len doesn't understand.

"I disabled the Waverider," Mick says, tapping his arm-piece. "It's not unfixable, but it'll take them some time to repair. They saw me come in as Kronos, which will confuse and mislead them, so even if they do start following us, they won't look it in the right direction. That'll buy us even more time."

"Buy us time? For what?"

Mick strides forward, falling to his knees with a clatter. "Len," he says, and he's swallowing like there's something tightening his throat the way it's tightening Len's. "You were hurt. I don't want you to be hurt. We can go back. We can change the past - any time, you just name it - you want us to stop your dad, you want to stop my fire, you want us never to get on the Waverider, we will, anything, anytime. I want you to be happy. I want - I want to be by your side, no matter what. No matter how short a time."

"You want -"

"I want to give you a chance to change history. Your history. Like you wanted to originally -"

"Forget that," Len says, because there was something far more valuable in that uncharacteristically long babble of words. "You want to be - with me?"

Mick's face reflects shock. 

Len doesn't know why.

"You're my partner, Lenny," Mick says, his face twitching as he tries to control himself. It was always Len's skill, not his. "You're the best thing I've got. I lost you once, damnit; I'm not losing you again."

"But -"

"I know that you - that you might be rethinking our partnership -"

"Never!" Len bursts out savagely. "Never - Mick - god, Mick - how can you think that?"

Mick's eyes are wide and wild and lost, just as they were when they saw him again that first time.

"I should, I know," Len continues. "I ought to let you go, if I wasn't so goddamn selfish. I'm keeping you back, holding you down - I'm the dead weight you have to carry - annoying - hideous - useless -"

"Who told you that?" Mick says. His voice is very, very flat. "Was it one of the Legends?"

"I don't need them to tell me what I already know," Len scoffs. "When you won't spent a whole night in my bed and can't even look at me - you won't even touch me - "

"I thought you hated me," Mick whispers. "For the Oculus. It's my fault -"

"I make my own choices, Mick," Len snaps. "I always have. Isn't that what you told me, after the fire?"

"But - your hands - your _mind_ -"

"I know," Len says. "I'm useless to you now."

"That's not true," Mick says. "Your mind is getting better every day, and Gideon even says there's hope for your hands to recover mobility, one day. And even if it weren't true, I'd still want you as a partner. As long as you'll have me as yours."

"But the Waverider," Len protests. "You're - you're _theirs_ , now. You listen to them - you joke with _them_ \- jokes I don't get -"

"I've lived with 'em for a year longer than you," Mick says gruffly, sounding puzzled. "Bound to be a few in-jokes you don't get. Not a big deal. Not enough to make you back away from me like you've been doing -"

"But you let them say - god, Mick! Maybe it's just my sense of humor that's faulty -"

"He finally admits it," Mick mutters.

"- but I just don't find it funny, you know, when they're joking about you being thick or dumb or brutish or an animal. When they pretend they don't let you help plan the jobs, when they make like they think you don't got skills -"

Len trails off.

Mick's face is white.

Realization comes, months too late.

"They're not joking," he says. His voice is as flat as Mick's was, earlier. "They don't respect you. I left you with a crew that doesn't respect you -"

"It's not your fault," Mick says. "It started - after. After you, and the Oculus."

Len's useless hands clench. "I'll kill them."

"You'll do no such thing."

"They insulted you!"

"Len -"

"They _meant_ all of that crap!"

Mick pulls Len into his arms. "Shhh," he says. "You're shaking, Lenny."

Len is, in fact, shaking. 

It's not cold, though, for once.

It's rage.

Unleashed at last. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------

Len still wants him.

Len - Len _still_ wants him.

Mick doesn't know if he was a saint in a previous life or something, but he knows he's been no saint in this one. He doesn't deserve a second chance like this.

_You won't spend a night in my bed - you can barely touch me!_

"I spent every night in your bed," he whispers into Len's ears, his arms still wrapped around his partner, trying to distract him from the all-consuming rage that's burning him from the inside. "I took you into my arms, just like this, and I held the nightmares at bay. Best part of my day."

"Then why did you leave?" Len whispers. "In the mornings?"

"Thought you wanted me too," Mick says honestly. "I think I made a right fuck up of it, Lenny. I never wanted you to think I didn't want you."

"My hands -"

"We'll manage. I don't care how. Worst case scenario, we get Ramon to build us some bleeding edge prosthetics and chop 'em off."

Len swallows a laugh, but Mick knows that particular way his shoulders shake.

"My mind -"

"I'd still bet on you against the world," Mick says. "I know I can't help with the planning, since my brain doesn't work that way -"

"What're you talking about?" Len asks, and he sounds almost bewildered. "You always help with the planning."

Mick frowns at him.

"Mick," Len says, and he's staring Mick straight in the eyes and there's nothing of the liar in there, nothing of hatred, nothing of resentment. Nothing that Mick was so afraid of. "I always ran all my plans by you so you could ID the bad stuff. You're good at planning. You're _smart_. Fuck, that's why I thought they must be joking - you're the best goddamn partner a man can have, and it never _occurred_ to me that they wouldn't see that."

Mick swallows. Kind words, he's missed those. But it's Len saying them - and Len is rarely kind, but always so painfully precise. That means he means what he's saying.

"Look at what you did now," Len urges him. "It was you, wasn't it, that figured out a way to lure them to the 50s, didn't you?"

Mick pauses, but that's all the confirmation Len needs. Len's brilliant, beautiful mind, working in high gear again.

"You got them to the right time period," Len continues. "You found your old armor, and wore it, even though I know how much you hate it and everything it represents -"

That's true.

(The Legends would never have noticed that.)

"- and you got me out in a way that deliberately echoed the first time we did this dance because you knew it'd wreak havoc with their minds."

"It's a smash and grab job," Mick says. He's aware his face is burning red; it's been so long since anyone's spoken of him in an admiring way, and a good word from Len was always worth a thousand of any others. "You don't need brains for that."

"Not brains for machines and layouts," Len says. "That's my job. But you, Mick - you get _people_. You can read 'em as well as I can pick a lock."

Mick just buries his face in Len's shoulder. He wants to say thank you, thank you for reminding me, thank you for being back when I thought you were gone for good, but he can't. It's not their way.

"When should we go to?" he asks, instead.

He feels more than sees Len frown. "What d'you mean?"

"To change your past. Our past. Do you want to aim for your dad again? Maybe after Lisa was born? Or sometime later -"

Len's melted hands curl around Mick's shoulders.

"The only thing I want to change is the fact that someone wearing my face killed a version of you - any version of you - when I was gone," Len says. 

Mick's forgiven him for that long ago, and said as much. He knows that version of Len had been brainwashed by the Legion. But Len still nurses the wound. 

"The Oculus - if you hadn't been there, your hands and mind wouldn't be -"

"Mick," Len says. "If I hadn't been there, you would've. You think that's something I'd okay? Ever?"

"We could've left Haircut there," Mick says, but he doesn't really mean it.

"Nah," Len says. "I'm not interested in changing the past. As long as I have you, I'll make the rest work. No, it's the future I'm more interested in."

"You want to go run a heist in the future?" Mick asks. Seems like a Len thing to do.

"Maybe later," Len concedes. "But right now, I want the Legends to pay."

"Len -" Mick starts.

"No arguments," Len says. 

"No killing," Mick rebuts.

Len makes a face at him, but Mick knows that’s a concession.

"Besides, what are you thinking?" Mick asks. "I can't fight them in this drone ship. Too small, too weak compared to how Hunter amped up the Waverider. Hell, after all the crap he’s done to her now that he has the whole timeline to pick from, I doubt there’s a ship out there that could stop them."

Len hums thoughtfully. “Hey, Mick,” he says. "You remember that beach where you found me?"

"Sure," Mick says, puzzled. "That old shipwreck that the time pirates we'd been chasing used as their home base. What about it?"

"It's not _quite_ just that..."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wreckage of the Mary Celeste is far more than a wreck on a beach somewhere near Gibraltar.

See, for one thing, the Mary Celeste was never wrecked. 

It was salvaged, empty, its crew gone missing – but not wrecked. 

Not in anything but the imagination of millions, the queen of the ghost ships, and that has its own type of power. 

That’s why here, on this lonely forsaken beach, the wreckage of that ship lives forever.

The ship – and the ghosts. 

This is the home of thieves and pirates: from every era, from every timeline, every religion, race, or creed. Alive or dead. It matters not. They mix freely.

Each legends in their own time, or in later ones – men who once walked the earth, men who walk it now, men who will but have not yet been born, men who pulled themselves free of their pages come together equally alongside women with proud smiles and occasional complaints at the gender inequities.

Thieves, all. 

In the end, it’s no surprise that this is where Leonard Snart, the thief who undertook to free the sea of time from the confines of the Time Masters, would be reborn.

Really.

It’s the _least_ they could do for one of their own.

And when that thief that was born by their efforts but never joined their crew comes back, his lover standing behind him – eyes wide like saucers – and calls for them, they answer in all their warring legions. The ghosts of the past, the ghosts of the future, the madmen who come to warm their souls by the fires.

Len grins when he sees them, his face still half-melted, his fingers still curled like clubs, but there’s hope burning in his eyes where before there was none. 

“Hello, there,” he says. “I’m looking for a ship that can help us hunt down another ship. Figured this was the right place for it.”

The ghosts are silent, staring, considering. Why should they grant such a request, and from a man yet living? A man not yet part of their crew?

“Of course,” Len continues, casual and blithe as if he wasn’t facing an army of the most terrifying thieves in history. “For a job like this, I need the best. So if you ain’t the best, don’t bother to apply.”

The ghosts murmur amongst themselves, the pride in their ships warring with the request from –

Well. In a way, he is one of them. 

So maybe it’s okay to say yes, just this once. 

Len looks at the crowd before him and his smile broadens. 

“Who’s first?”


End file.
